Combative and truculent, Iraq's former dictator, Saddam Hussein, argued with the judge and scuffled with security guards yesterday, when he went on trial for mass murder in a Baghdad courtroom that was as much a theatre as a forum for justice. Beamed across the Middle East on television, the trial marked the first criminal proceedings against an Arab leader in modern times.

Echoing the defiance he showed when first charged last year, Saddam refused to give his name when asked to confirm his identity. "I am the president of Iraq," he said. "You know me," he told Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd. When the session opened, he stood and asked Amin: "Who are you? I want to know who you are."

Denouncing the American invasion and making it clear he was appealing to a world audience, he said: "I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq." Brushing off the judge's attempts to interrupt him, he declared: "Neither do I recognise the body that has designated and authorised you, nor the aggression, because all that has been built on a false basis." Later he objected to being referred to as "former" president.

Five black-robed judges sat in the specially-built courtroom in the marble building that once served as the National Command Headquarters of the Ba'ath party in what is now the fortified Green Zone. Only the presiding judge's face was seen on TV. His name had come out in the media earlier.

The broadcast was subject to a deliberate 30-minute delay to allow for control over what went out and give the authorities the chance to censor Saddam's comments. After the three-hour hearing, the judge adjourned the trial until November 28, saying that around 30 or 40 witnesses had not come to Baghdad for the trial. "They were too scared to be public witnesses. We're going to work on this issue for the next sessions," he told Reuters. At the start of the hearing the judge called the accused - Saddam and his seven co-defendants - into the courtroom one by one. The ex-president was the last to enter, looking gaunt. He motioned to the escorts to slow down a little. After sitting, he greeted his co-defendants.

They sat on metal chairs in three rows, penned behind low white bars. They included Saddam's half-brother. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan. In a dark suit and open-necked shirt, Saddam read from an old copy of the Qur'an he had with him, and asked for a pad and pencil. After he refused to give his name, the judge said: "Why don't you take a seat and let the others say their names and we will get back to you."

"You are an Iraqi and you know who I am," Saddam parried. "And you know I don't get tired." At another stage he stood up and argued that video evidence being shown was inadmissible. During a recess, he laughed and chatted with his fellow defendants. When two Iraqi guards in flak jackets took hold of him as they left the court, he shrugged them off and, after a scuffle, they let him walk out on his own.

Saddam's eldest daughter, Raghad, praised her father's performance. "It was the most wonderful thing I've seen in my life. He was the most wonderful and courageous father," she said in a telephone interview with the pan-Arab satellite channel, Al-Arabiya TV. "He is a man who never surrenders. He's a hero, and he will remain a hero," she added, speaking from the Jordanian capital of Amman.

The judge read the defendants their rights before listing the charges, and told them that they face possible execution if convicted. The charges relate to the killings and executions of more than 140 Shia men from the village of Dujail, put to death after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982. The case was chosen on the grounds that it should be easier to prove he ordered it than better-known atrocities such as the gassing of thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

Near the end of the session, Saddam's lawyer, Khaled al-Dulaimi, asked for the names of the witnesses who will testify against the defendant - names that have been kept secret to prevent reprisals. The judge said the lawyer could ask the prosecutors for the names but did not say if he would require them to be handed over.

Some Iraqis watched the trial with relief, others, particularly among the Sunni minority, dismissed it as a farce. "The beautiful thing is that the trial is live," Hamid Hussein, 25, watching in an electronics store in the southern Shia city of Najaf, told Reuters. "It comes just in time ... now we start trying the criminals."

"This is the end of every tyrant," said Laith Abd Mahdi, a Dujail man outside his small house. But in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, Sunni demonstrators chanted: "Long live Saddam Hussein" and carried banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Down with the occupation and the puppet government".

Prosecutors are preparing other cases against Saddam - including the Anfal Operation, a crackdown on the Kurds in the late 1980s that killed 180,000 people; the suppression of Kurdish and Shia revolts in 1991; and the Halabja massacre.

Insurgents killed 19 people yesterday, including three election commission officials who were shot near Abu Ghraib. In addition, the military said two soldiers were killed - one American, the other British - in attacks on Tuesday night.